Regional Geography Flashcards
1
Q
Are Africans in the ‘coup-belt’ prisoners of geography?
A
- since 1950 there have been more than 48 coup attempts globally. Almost 1/2 have been in Africa - over 100 succeeded.
- 45 of 54 African nations have experienced at least one coup attempt.
- 17 of the 18 coups worldwide since 2017 have been in Africa, most in west Africa and the Sahel.
2
Q
What is the coup-belt?
A
- modern geopolitical concept which emerged in the 2020s to describe the region of West Africa, Central Africa and the Sahel.
3
Q
Geographical factors as to why is the Sahel prone to coups?
A
- the region is semi-arid
- poor coup growth
- suffers water and food shortages
- landlocked
4
Q
Coup - Gabon:
A
- lack of basic resources, abundance of rich resources, i.e., cobalt.
climate - arid (lack of precipitation) - historical factors: e.g., borders (French ex-colony, borders based on territory not culture).
5
Q
What is environmental determinism?
A
- Evolutionary theory influences a pseudo-scientific geographical racism, poisitng a hierarchy of human types according to climate, with white Europeans at the top.
- Geographers mapped civilisation/barbarism onto physical grogragues in a ‘moral economy of climate’
- Africa and Australia’s ‘inauspicious climates explained their savagery
- And the (supposed) lack of civilisation in the tropics was thought to be due to the climate.
6
Q
Environmental determinists:
A
- Friedrich Ratzel
- Ellen Churchill Semple
7
Q
Friedrich Ratzel:
A
- In 1901, Ratzel coins the concept lebensraum (living space)
- Healthy or more vigoirs states will grow beyond their borders
- This idea was later adopted by Nazi ideology to justify aggression and expansion.
8
Q
Ellen Churchill Semple:
A
- Human temperament, culture, religion, values, economy, etc all derived from the environment.
9
Q
Responses to environmental determinism:
A
- Environmental determinism cannot explain variation and migration, humans modify and shape environments as much as they are shaped by them.
- ‘The geographical experiment in holding nature and culture together in causal evolutionary terms was collapsing as an academic enterprise’.
10
Q
Responses to environmental determinism - landscape and region:
A
Carl O Sauer
Paul Vidal de la Blache
11
Q
Carl O Sauer:
A
- (1889-1975)
- In 1925, Sauer publishes the Morphology of Landscape
- Geography as the study of ‘culture areas’
- Culture as an ‘imprint’ or ‘stamp’ upon the earth’s surface to produce a landscape
- Culture + nature = landscape
12
Q
Paul Vidal de la Blache:
A
- (1845-1918):
- The ‘region’ is a unique expression of the interaction between humanity and the physical environment
- In particular places, pays, the natural realm provided the milieux in which ‘genres de vie’ (ways of life) were shaped
- Customs are etched onto the land
- Habits of life reflect nature, but they also transform it.
13
Q
The rise of regional geography?
A
- ‘regional geography’ is the dominant way that Geography was taught and researched in Europe and N. America from the 1930s to the 1950s.
- Instead of specialising in a branch of geography (geomorphology, political geography, cultural geography, etc.) lecturers would specialise in a particular region of the world.
14
Q
Hartshorne:
A
- The Nature of Geography (1939)
- Geography as chorology: ‘the ultimate purpose of Geography is the study of areal differentiation of the world’
- Tried to define Geography as the identification and classification of distinct ‘regions’
- Yet, region is a “fuzzy” concept: it refers to both sub-national (Midlands, East Anglia) and supra-national (Scandinavia, Middle East) entities
15
Q
Mackinder:
A
- First Reader in Geography at University of Oxford (1887); co-founder of LSE (1895); MP (1910-1922)
- Evolutionary / Darwinist view of geography as a human struggle for space and resources
- In 1899, part of the first European expedition to climb Mount Kenya
- In 1904, publishes the Geographical Pivot of History
- Places geography explicitly at the service of imperial power and control
- Geography as a kind of military/strategic knowledge = Geopolitics